


How To Make A Memory

by nyctanthes



Series: The Face of the Plateau [3]
Category: As You Are (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anger, Canon Queer Relationship, Coming of Age, Drugs, First Love, Friendship, Identity, M/M, Makeup sans tutorials, Missing Scene, Repression, Series typical fraught sex, The art of the art lesson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:34:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23884570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyctanthes/pseuds/nyctanthes
Summary: Ten hours. But who's counting.
Relationships: Jack & Sarah, Jack/Mark (As You Are)
Series: The Face of the Plateau [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/989607
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	How To Make A Memory

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I was done with this series, but apparently have more story to tell. Nothing currently though, beyond the end of _And The Work, It Was Fun_. 
> 
> In other words, this is a missing scene from the previous fic. Specifically, the end of Chapter 11. If you haven't read it you might want to at least skim it. And a general **content warning** that the emotions and events from that chapter, which include rough sex and emotional violence, carry over into this story. 
> 
> In this story are ideas I've been kicking around for a while. Some I had while writing ATWIWF but I couldn't make them fit. Anyway, it gave me an excuse to return to this universe and these characters.

I've been abused, and I've been used  
I'm gonna lose my thoughts in 200 bars  
You know I've tried, but I know I'm tired  
I'm losing track of time 200 bars  
I get confused, y'know I'm used to it  
I'm gonna lose my thoughts in 200 bars

_\- 200 Bars_ , Spiritualized 

_________________________________

Except for essential trips to the bathroom and the kitchen, they haven’t left their room in forty hours.

Outside, it smells like mid-spring in northern climes. Fresh cut grass and weather that hasn’t reached its full potential. Thin rain, thick fog, pollen and wet gravel. The squashed flat, pink and grey carcasses of the luckless baby birds that speckle the driveway. The sun moves toward the horizon and heat, green and mushroom sweet, leaches from the earth's pores.

Inside, it smells like sweat and salt and pepper. Pizza crusts stiff as tree branches, congealed cheese and clots of red sauce. A spunk-splashed, tomato colored, once fuzzy polyester rug that he’s decorated face up, on his side, on his shins and on all fours: in purposeful strokes, careless dribbles and concentrated, _I can do thi_ s fine lines. His sheets are soft, pungent and oily. They're crunchy with potato chip crumbs. Stained old ivory, caramel and day-glo orange from dried come, slops of soda and the residue from cheese puffs - the fat, smooth kind. They're powdered white-on-white with the drifts of skin, fine as confectioner’s sugar, that slough from their bodies as they move against each other, over and over. 

He likes the smell. They keep the windows closed.

He folds the rug in half once and once again, squashes it behind his chair. Pushes back into place the hump of clothes that threaten to fall off it. They sit cross-legged between bunk bed and desk, knees touching, butt bones digging into the grey carpet. Between the two of them - Mark in a t-shirt, him in shorts no underwear - they’re almost dressed. 

The tube is squat and black, shiny underneath its wrapper of clear plastic. With his pinky fingernail he finds the seam and tears it off, a satisfying crackle-crunch that reminds him what he holds in his hand is new and untouched, bought just for him. He removes the top and twists it open. The room’s only illumination comes from his desk lamp: a dimming, forty-five watt bulb. The best he can tell is that the lipstick is purple brown or reddish brown. Sarah is an earth tone girl.

During the time it takes him to breath in and out Mark swerves skeptical, until he's on the verge of reneging. Then he remembers and grins: lopsided andself-deprecating.

“Don’t take it seriously. That’s what you said.”

“Exactly. You asked me if there was something I wanted to do, before you left. This is it.”

Mark nods, more a change in his expression than a physical movement. The closest to agreement, to affirmation he'll receive. He takes it. 

It's the very least Mark can do.

He holds Mark’s face firm, finger and thumb stabilizing his jaw, chin braced against the webbing between the two. He smooths the ubiquitous chunk of hair, today more brown than blond, away from his eye and tucks it behind his ear. Licks his thumb and cleans the corners of his mouth, where crumbs have collected. Swipes at cookie dough ice cream that’s melted into the narrow valley between his cheek and nose.

A tentative, lipsticked swipe across Mark’s top lip is followed by a firmer one. Same for the bottom lip. They’re long, but narrow. He’d never noticed.

The color smudges. It’s hard to make it stay within the lines. Again he wets his thumb and wipes cleanish the circumference of Mark’s lips.

Next is powder, medium-brown and the consistency of refrigerated butter, kept pristine by more clear plastic.He applies it with a mashed thin, cloud white puff nestled inside the case. It spreads patchy and uneven: thick along his cheekbones, the bridge of his nose and forehead; thin under his eyes, down his cheeks and along his jawline. He adds more to where there’s less. Uses first his fingers, next his palms to rub it in, smooth it out. There’s red blush of two shades and two types, powder and cream. He smears one on his left finger, the other on his right. Lightly this time, he rubs one on top of the other, across the sharp planes of Mark's face. 

The results aren’t quite what he expected. 

Through these ministrations Mark’s eyes have remain closed, body pointedly still. As his red-caked fingers leave his face, he opens his eyes; looks at him with a face too neutral to be natural.

He shows him what’s next. “You’ll need to close your eyes again, for this.”

To his lids he applies eyeshadow the same color as the inside of mussel and oyster shells, the ones so blue they’re purple. (Sarah, he notes, really likes purple.) Next to the other pinks and purples in the case - creamier, rosier, pearlier - this one seems dark. But in low light, on skin it’s shimmery and translucent. So he applies more, and higher, until the little brush - he likes the brush almost more than the color - reaches orbital bones. He leans back, reconsiders; uses the bottom of Mark’s shirt to wipe some away. While he’s there, he swipes his cheeks. Which only makes the blush, much brighter than in the case, spread wider, like a when he dabs a spaghetti sauce stain with water. For the eyeliner (green) and the mascara (black) he once again holds Mark’s chin. Whose expression has turned mulish, is not doubtful but downright skeptical: an unfunny joke taken too far. 

“Jesus that's sharp, be careful. Where'd you get that? It itches! Is it going to give me pinkeye?”

When he’s finished he lays Mark on the floor and stands up, one leg on either side of him. He frames him between a rectangle of fingers, like he would if he had Sarah’s Polaroid.

Over the years he’s seen Mark every which way. Freshly showered, filthy and underwater. Covered in blood, mud, concrete dust, grass, lube, vomit, mashed potatoes, come, wood shavings, vagina and paint; smelling of booze, Mom's shampoo, floor varnish, sawdust, unwashed skin, scummy teeth, gasoline, weed, cigarettes and Sarah’s perfume. Tanned red and brown, five months of winter pale and beaten black and blue. He didn’t think it was possible for him to look anything less than beautiful.  


Now he knows how to fix that.

“Change of plans.”

“I knew it. Bring me a mirror you…” But he’s already out the door.

He returns with one soapy washcloth with which he will _scrub scrub clean_. One dry washcloth with which he will _blot blot dry_. Mark's off the floor and standing by his desk, paging through his anatomy textbook. He glances at his watery reflection in the window and - amused, appalled, aggravated - swiftly looks down and turns another page. But he's not done, doesn’t want to but can’t stop: steals another look, shares a mocking, resigned glance with his window self. _This is what we've been reduced to,_ he commiserates.

He steps closer, wraps an apologetic arm around him, snug beneath his ribs. Mark's heart pulses high in his stomach, not fast but not slow either. He presses into his back and balances his chin on the ridge of his shoulder. Mark leans into him. His lungs expand and contract, his breathing reluctantly lengthens. The washcloth drips lukewarm, rapidly cooling water on their toes. They’re looking at a picture of a skinned body. Not only the bones and muscles, their names are hard enough to keep in his head, but everything that lies in-between and connects them: ligaments, cartilage, tendons and fascia, the giant sausage casing that holds everything in place.

“What lies under the skin, it still freaks me out, even after I’ve seen it. Turns out that looking at the insides of a dead person is less scary than the idea of looking at the insides of a living one.”

Mark turns his face toward him and tilts his chin up, blows gently on his cheek. Leans closer and mouths it, with teeth, embossing it with gummy traces of lipstick and powder. He thumbs his Adam’s Apple, skimming oh so gently, another wordless apology, along the parts of his neck he gripped too tight. Ringed violet and puce and grey-blue: a sea-sick rainbow. 

“While you talk shop, can you take this shit off my face?”

When Mark’s face is cleaner than it’s been in days, he chucks both washcloths in the direction of his trash can. One makes it, hangs over the edge, a third in. 

They smoke a jointand he puts on a CD, given to him some time ago by someone who wants something from him. A state of affairs he comprehended only last week, as he started to think more seriously about the future. His future. He’s getting used to it, deciding how much he likes it. It’s a strange combination: rhythmically gentle, emphatically restless. To anyone who will listen the songs declare: _It’s time to go. For me, for you._ The lead's voice is quiet and searching but it doesn’t matter. He's backed up with horns.

Mark crosses his legs and lies down, closes his eyes. He cactuses his arms and his shirt rides to chest level, leaving him naked from his nipples to the soles of his feet. His ribs flare and separate and he sees the arc, the tensile strength of individual bones. He wants to spread fingers across them and drum, find the pliable cartilage between them and push into the dark dark: liver, diaphragm and spleen. 

“Hippie, drifty shit,” Mark complains.“Blat, blat, beat. Moan, moan, sigh.Is that a guitar or a keyboard? What’s he droning about, all dreamy and serious?Relentless. It's like being inside your head, Jack, when you watch me 'cause you think I’m not paying attention. You don't get it. I’m always paying attention.” He uncrosses his legs, spreads his arms wide.

_Better_  
 _Run run run away_  
 _Better_  
 _Run run run away_

He’d raise an eyebrow, if he could.

“Seems pretty clear to me,” he says. Too late. Mark’s asleep.

In the kitchen, he pops a handful of steak and cheese Hot Pockets into the toaster oven and stares out the window, looking but not looking at the El Camino off the driveway, on blocks in one of the weedier sections of lawn near the side of the house, barely visible through the fog that’s rolled in. He doesn't remember a time it wasn't there, decaying by inches. Dad was forever intending to re-build it, have it ready for him when he got his license, Junior year. He failed to stick around long enough to break his promise; left it for Mark to notice, to wax enthusiastic and gush romantic. Mark knows _a guy_ who can help them. A stand-up guy who’ll hook them up with parts. Wouldn’t that be _sweet_. _A new engine_. _350 V8 diesel, of course_. It’s not a _powerhouse_ , like the ones from the ‘60s, but it’s still a _great ride_ , a _cool car_.

He takes the bus, mostly.

Standing by the counter, shifting his weight foot-to-foot, sketching a wobbly circle with his body, he's puzzled. He sifts muzzily through the jelly beans in his brain, stirring up thoughts that days ago would have sent him, hands clapped over his ears, howling into the night. 

But he's tired. 

What did he hope to achieve through his makeup experiment? Something petty and awful, revenge in a blandly aggressive form Mark can’t object to? Turnabout, after all, is fair play but no. Too calculated and sneering. His anger simmers and simmers before it catches, flares oily and black. But it isn't smothered by humiliation and he can't say he didn't hope for better results. More likely his agenda is trite: a desire to brand Mark. _Mine mine mine_. With nothing gratuitous and permanent, the tattoos that are Mark’s obsession; or whose intimacy is stage-managed, Sarah's photographs. But through an act that's uniquely his, an act that would remind Mark, via methods he cannot deny, who he's been consorting with, over the months and years. What that makes him. 

She'd object to the assertion, but Sarah gives him the idea. Weeks ago, months perhaps. He's in her room, on her bed, fairy lights twinkling, playing with her horse figurines. (He’s partial to the Palominos.) In front of a free standing, full length mirror, face tight with concentration she views herself from the front, the side, the back, the other side. She tries on outfit after outfit, short skirts and long dresses, silky shirts with plunging necklines and sweaters that cover half her neck while emphasizing her breasts, rejecting each with a grunt of despair, tossing the _No ways_ all over her room. She eventually returns to the second outfit. "What a fucking waste of my time. You could be a little helpful, Jack, give me some advice," she complains while he offers distracted apologies. Next comes the careful application of foundation, blush, eyeliner, mascara, eyeshadow and lipstick. Hands on hips, she pouts at herself, vamps with herself.

“What do you think?”

“You look good,” he replies automatically, not bothering to look away from his Anheuser-Busch style Clydesdales.

“Jack!”

Her face is smooth and opaque, less fleshy. She looks like an imperfect clone of herself: more solid, skin not the same shade as the original, older in a way that's hard to describe. Experienced, a touch robotic. If he taps her cheek it might ring hollow and resonant, clear as a bell. 

“You do look good. Not just good. _Great_.” He shrugs. “You always do. I don't...” _know why you use the stuff, you didn't used to._ But he remembers it's rude to say those words. Mom pouts, when he forgets. “I like it," he concludes.

Not convincingly enough. Sarah hisses, grits low and blunt through her teeth. “Typical. This is serious. How am I supposed to believe a word you say if it's forever polite and generic. This isn’t as easy as I make it look, you know. And it's important, to look good. Out there in the world where everyone's watching and judging.” Words spoken mostly from habit. They’ve known each other too long. He's heard it all before.

“Don’t you think,” she circles her face with an animated, impatient hand, an argument directed at someone with no stake in the matter, "this makes me look better? More sophisticated and date ready?”

He doesn’t know about sophisticated. She’s seventeen, teeter-tottering on high heels. Through her shimmery, petroleum-black dress that absorbs the light he sees what looks like lace underwear. 

But the effect is interesting. 

“A _date_? That’s an awfully fancy word for parking.”

“We do more than that!”

“So where do you go? What do you do?”

“Mostly,” she admits, “we go to the movies. Sometimes though, like tonight, we drive into the city and Nick buys me dinner.”

“That sounds nice.”

What it sounds, is weird. Having someone she sees every day before, during and after school drive her a few miles into Albany and buy her dinner, though she owns her own car and can afford three times over to buy her own food. (Five times? Ten? He's learning, but others' money remains a mystery.) Aping adult rituals the adults in question typically don’t enjoy. They do it because they’re supposed to. It shows that they can, that they care.

She hears his skepticism. “He knows I can afford it, but he can too. It’s nice to be treated, to have an excuse to get out of town. Besides, it’s not like he's expecting anything in return. You know how he is, so scrupulous.”

They've been dealing with similar issues. If by similar you mean guys who can't express their true desires, steadfastly refuse to look at them let alone name them. Forget about owning them. Guys who are made doubly uncomfortable that the ones they're with don't share their attitudes. What better way to manage the embarrassment, the loss of control, the _fear_ than shifting responsibility. _T_ _he problem isn’t that I’m a repressed asshole. It’s that you’re someone who expects too much from sex. From life. From me._

He listens, how he listens to Sarah, to the details that pink his cheeks even as he assures her he is copacetic with them. But he doesn't share his insights with her and has no plans to. 

He is forever protective of his shame.

“It’s fun going out like that, formal and official?”

She pauses her last minute hair primping, nimble fingers and a wide-tooth comb, hairspray that smells like summer afternoons at the beach. She gives his question more thought than it warrants.

“Yeeesss. If the food is good.”

Walking out her front door to meet Nick - and more importantly Nick’s car, his ride home - he reminds himself that he takes what he can get, what he’d agreed was reasonable and acceptable: first within the unreasonable limits set for them by this world, next within the narrower boundaries drawn by Mark. They don’t entirely satisfy, but eight and a quarter times out of ten he demonstrates a decent approximation of the emotion. Things could be worse. Things _have_ been worse. He mustn’t get greedy.

His evergreen mantra.

Despite his conversations with Sarah, the short leash he keeps himself on, soon enough everything goes to hell. Everything goes to hell in his own fucking kitchen, on a day he dared believe he's got this studying thing down. Everything goes to hell as Mark plugs his ass and jerks him off, orders him not to come, not to move; takes him deeper into his mouth than he ever has or ever will. Everything goes to hell as Mark turns him into a laser beam, all thoughts concentrated into a single burning point, word, name. _Please please please._ A besotted idiot of a laser beam who refuses to see what he’s aimed at. He believes Mark has abruptly, unexpectedly acknowledged himself; fully and finally embraced the concept of them. His patience has reaped rewards. He is powerful and sharp, cutting, the narrowest beam of brilliant light.

Everything goes to hell as, abruptly and unexpectedly, though only to him, he’s on the floor, Mark’s on fire and he can’t breathe. Time slows, fractions of seconds tick-tock like minutes and with lack of oxygen comes understanding. He doesn’t appreciate being deflected and refracted, bounced this way and that - all sense of direction, all sense of self lost, drowning in the ocean of Mark's despair. 

And he doesn’t have to put up with it. 

He calls Sarah and asks her to buy him _lipstick and stuff._

"Why?"

"Because."

"It's for you?"

"No."

"For someone else? For Mark?“

"I didn't say that. Why would he want that? Why would I get it for him when he can ask you himself?“

“You’re not going to tell me.”

“Hmmm…”

“Jack!”

“It’s hard to explain.” 

“Not that hard. You use words, one after the other. Single syllable words are acceptable, if that makes it easier for you to organize your thoughts.”

“Please don’t make me explain. I’ll tell you later? I promise I will make time. Very soon I'll have lots of it.”

She sighs, taken advantage of and gusty with it, taken for granted and stymied by her own good nature. 

"Do you have a color preference?"

“Not especially. Whatever is good.” 

"By when?"

"Next week.” He almost forgets to say, “Thanks."

He should have elaborated. Should have asked for her advice on the best colors and combinations to use, how to apply them. The wisdom of the enterprise. She doesn't like it when he shuts her out. She's right to be annoyed. When he hides the truth from her, he usually ends up regretting it.

He wakes Mark with the scent of sizzling beef product, pastry triangles burned patchwork black, shedding flakes thin and crispy from their corners. He juggles cups of cola he’s mixed with the ends of a couple of liquor bottles Mom doesn’t care about.

“I’ll be back,” he says, unnecessarily.

In Mom's room he opens the top drawer of her dresser, where she keeps her supplies and the tools to apply them. There’s too much to choose from: tubes, tubs, brushes, sticks and pans stacked one on top of the other, the overflow poked towards the back, the dark and crusty corners. 

The slick black plastic, who knew there were this many shades of black, has faded over time, filmed with a residue of itself. The contents, once creamy smooth, powdery smooth or sharply smooth have lost their sheen, are well worn and sticky smudged. He assiduously reads the labels: nail polish, liquid blush, liquid foundation, powder blush, powder foundation, liquid eyeliner, pencil lip liner. Mascara for long lashes, thick lashes and fake lashes. Eyeshadow sparkly, satin and matte. There are multiple colors and multiple variations on each color: blue, green, purple, red, pink and beige. Except they’re not called anything that simple or self-explanatory. They’re named after places, none of which he’s seen. Marble mouthed, he recites them: Santa Fe, Mont Blanc, Siberia, Fiji, Zanzibar, Punjab. There’s fruit he’s never eaten and flowers he’s never smelled: Love Your Peaches, Watermelon Glow, Rosie Posie, Lewd Lilac, Strawberry Cream and Tarty Apple. There’s sex, of course: Anytime, Anywhere. The Lady is a Tramp. Nice and Easy. Not the kind he’s had.

He pulls the entire drawer from its casters and walks with it back to their room. Mark has propped himself against the bed, is contemplatively polishing off their second after-midnight snack. He kicks the door closed and walks short steps to the rug, straightens his arms and drops the drawer. It hits the ground with the sound of splitting particle board he’ll feel bad about in the morning.

“I left you a couple.”

“Thanks.” With an _Oomph_ he sits down, tricep, elbow, hip, knee, side of the calf, ankle and foot making solid, sticky contact with Mark. He settles his eyes on the window, the skewed reflection of possessions sown aimless across all available surfaces, including the walls. He picks up his Hot Pocket and bites into it: crunchy, doughy, chewy, cheesy, oily and tepid. Delicious. Chases it with a sip of boozy soda.

A car growls past, splitting apart with headlights and noise the silent night and its puffs of fog. They turn the window right side out, provide access to the outside: gravel, hummocky lawn and the trees that border the edge of it, partial protection from what lies beyond. Their trunks plash yellow, strips of road briefly emerge from the mist. A reminder, not that he needs one, of the world outside their door, nose pressed to his window, calling to them. 

From the corner of his eye he hazards a glance at Mark: bare assed, red sauce mustache and beef bits on his collar. Mark slurps his drink, yawns one of his little kid yawns. It stretches his whole face like putty, squinches his eyes and curls his lips past his teeth. He follows it with a full-body shiver of satisfaction. 

The road once again quiet and dark, he returns his attention to the window. The smudgy glass offers truncated views of desk, chair, nightstand and bunk bed. The top bed has been stripped to its mattress, Mark’s possessions in two duffles and a guitar case by the front door. The images are soft and liquid, foreground edges blending into the background, more inviting and infinitely more exotic than the real thing. 

The window lets him watch Mark drift to the music, sway gently in time with it. Mouth along to unfamiliar lyrics and frown, smile, snort. He's everywhere, nowhere and possibly here. Hums reverberate down his arm, Mark presses closer and closer. He's giving him ideas but first he looks at himself: glassy-eyed, lank-haired, short and skinny, parts too big or too small - placed with insufficient care. A zit the size of Mars blazons his left cheek. He could be disgusted but a grin sends him in the opposite direction. Without turning, he tugs the end of Mark’s shirt, where it’s loosely covering his dick, brushes knuckles across it. 

“Take this off and lie down.”

He splits a nail prying off the inside lid. Once clear plastic, now a dusty, pinky beige that coaxes the loops and spirals of his fingerprints out of hiding. He sprinkles it over Mark with an even back and forth movement of his wrist, like Mom does when she’s breading chicken. The idea makes him smirk but Mark’s eyes are once again closed, nose twitching as powder snows down on him. He sneezes.

He rubs the powder in with food slick fingers that add their own color and texture. Light reddish ochre streaks chalky and granular from left hip bone to right bottom rib. A smoother, paler layer crosses it, from right hip bone to left middle rib. 

“Is that it?”

“No.”

Mark silently grumbles. He's not listening. He’s too busy assessing his work, hardly begun but it’s hideously wrong. The frustration rises, dull but powerful. His most vocal critic. 

_X *marks* the spot. Get it? Nice work, Jack. You, son, are destined for a life of greatness. Pay no attention to what everyone says about you. You’re simply, too subtle for them._

He’s stuck, can’t think outside the box. The tub. Can’t escape from that bloody lump in his chest, its _beat beat blat_ and what it wants.

He closes his eyes and casts about for inspiration. It comes in the unlikely form of Ms. Z: Art, Fall semester, Senior year. An easy A and he needs one to pad his pathetic transcript. He thinks about her for the first time since he finished the class, perhaps for the first time since he stepped into her classroom. He remembers her as a grown woman with a child’s body. Flat and bouncy, over-sized hands and feet she’ll never grow into; radiating curious, constant energy. Her eyes are dark and probing, restless and alert. She holds her head slightly off-center from her neck, with the opposite shoulder dipping lower, curving forward. The cumulative effect is that of an animal given human consciousness. A bird, perhaps, or a fox, though her ears aren’t especially large. Before Shit Town, rumor has it, she worked in an arty field, with people who for years had been legally drinking.

“Creating," she informs the class, “is about recognizing a feeling in yourself that you can trust. A genuine impulse: half desire, half something more serious. It’s essential that you learn to trust this feeling or you’re nowhere. The best piece you make will be described as _nice_ or _good_ or _cool._ ” She draws out the last word. _Queue-lllllllll_. He never figures out if she thinks she's making fun of them or if she truly believes that’s how it’s pronounced. “You,” she continues, sweeping her hand wide, encompassing all of them, four to a table. The only occasions he’s allowed, not counting the mediocrities and indignities of science and language labs, to sit unregimented, outside of rows and desks. “You need to think about how to free yourself from yourself. To stop weighing yourselves down, letting yourselves be dictated to by extraneous thoughts and impulses, by whether or not it's pretty or what it means or will people understand it. _But will they like it? Say nice things about it?_ It doesn't matter! In art, you must focus on the importance of _doing_.”

“It!”

“Her!”

( _Your mother. Your sister. Your dog. No,_ your _dog. No, your grandmother. She called me last week begging for it._ )

Rote, half-assed snickers thread the room. Her only response is to press play on a mini-boom box. The whole semester it’s rested on the shelf below the chalkboard, behind her desk, gathering blue, white, yellow dust that over the weeks turns the color of ash. She perches on a corner of her desk, twiggy legs penduluming. 

“What I want you to focus on,” she says over the drum, flute and Eastern string instrument that _plink plink plonk_ , each loud note from the too small, poor quality speakers loose knuckles to his TMJs, “is pursuing unity in the process of seeing and drawing. Unity in the total act of creativity. As you can hear, there’s music,” and a voice mixes in, soars above the _tuck-a-thump_ of the hand drums. The drummer using a technique that he appreciates rather than enjoys for its virtuosity. He’s well aware how hard it is to make any kind of drum sound good. The singer is a male voice pitched high and nasal, chant-whine-moan-singing words in an unfamiliar register. One on top of the other nonsense words that use a lot of tongue, front of the palate and upper throat. They aren’t nonsense words to whoever understands them, but he doesn’t. No one in the class understands. Not even Raj, the Indian kid ( _Sri Lankan, my parents are from Sri Lanka. How many times do I have to tell you..._ ) taking the class because there’s a fine arts requirement to graduate, and he heard this one is an easy A.

“I’ve put on this music to establish rhythm, to help you quiet your mind and access your body’s full possibility. Don’t expect to get it immediately. It takes time, and if all goes well, we’ll do this again.”

Then, she hands out bandanas.

Apparently, she had _No idea this would happen_. No idea that giving twenty high schoolers blindfolds, acrylicpaints and an invitation to stop thinking, stop controlling themselves and _Do_ would create nothing but the fine work of chaos. It comes to her as revelation that none of the Capital higher ups give a shit about such an old-fashioned and snooty art form as painting. One that can’t cover itself with the fig leaf the photography teacher annually reaches for: _I provide career training!_ Her only responsibilities are to keep the inmates contained for forty-seven minutes and send them onward: rested and ready for real work, fresh and _clean_.

For a moment he feels bad for her, feels guilty for joining in the mayhem. He wonders where she ended up. 

A sign of maturity. 

He shifts to his knees, takes a long look at what he’s painted on Mark before closing his eyes. Inside his lids he sees after-burn, television static that skews yellow, a long white line moving erratically up and down, side to side, like in Pong. Pretty, but too distracting. It has to be blackest black. There’s a scarf in the drawer, silky purple and black wrapped around a handful of glass bracelets. It’s flimsy and transparent, but also sufficiently long to wind twice around his eyes and knot tight in the back, like Mom does when she’s fending off a migraine.

“Shouldn’t you be doing that to me?” Mark laughs. He nudges him with his heel, rough against his thigh.

He doesn't answer. He leans forward and touches air, followed by tattered carpet fibers. Even in this space, his eight-by-twelve space he should be able to navigate during a combined tornado, blizzard, blackout and hurricane, the lack of light is disorienting. He shifts to all fours and gropes for the drawer. At random he selects bottles, sticks, tubes and pots. He gives them a sniff test and, if they pass, bumps them against Mark’s side. He pushes the drawer out of his way, gropes for Mark’s thighs and straddles them, puts hands on him, pins on a map. Here is his right arm, here his left, there's his stomach and also his face. Mark shifts under him, restless and wary. He's waiting for him to get on with it and say something, do something, indicate what the fuck he intends to do to him. Time is finite, the hours are winding down.

“You ok?”

“Sure. A little bored, but ok.”

“Not much longer.” 

He smears his hands, wrist to fingertip, with a viscous fluid the consistency of blood. Rubs it anywhere he can reach that’s not Mark’s face, like his only objective is to get it off his hands.  He opens a different container. The liquid is tackier, finely milled mud. Again, he rubs Mark down.

Since he started whatever-this-is with Sarah's makeup, Mark’s been doing a poor job of faking tranquility. He's been tense and coiled. He's been waiting for the punchline that is sure to come, delivered at his expense. But now that he's stopped observing Mark, stopped watching and judging what he's doing to him, Mark relaxes. Shoulders crack in their sockets, one and two as Mark stretches his arms fully over his head. He flexes and twists but slowly, savoring it. He shifts his hips up and down, rubs his ass cheeks against his knees, spreads his narrow, bony body wider.

_Cause I'm blind, but not as blind as blind as you._  
 _I’m sick, there's not a thing I want to do about it_  
 _I’m dumb, but now I want to mouth off about it_  
 _I’m tired of it all, I guess that I am through with it all_  
 _Yeah I'm tired of it all, I guess that I am through with it all_

He doesn't note this time how appropriate the lyrics are. He doesn't want to break the flow with laughter and derision, impatience and trenchant accusations he’s put this album on to make a point. Maybe he could express his sentiments less obviously, cut his hair and dye it acid green or hot pink. He maintains his focus, his peace. He wiggles lower, onto Mark’s shins.

Pencil thin sticks. Thick ones, too. Baby’s first colors. He picks up a chubby one. Twists it too far open, presses down too hard on Mark's knee and the lipstick breaks from its container. All that’s left in the plastic tube is a concave, waxy stub. He tosses it aside and splits the broken piece in half, one for each hand, mashes them between his fingers and across his palms. The fragments further divide. They dissolve, melt from the heat blossoming from his skin. He rubs his palms against each other, along the tops and insides of Mark’s thighs. He likes the sensation, the picture he can't see. Pale, sparse hair and dirty skin made sticky red. He reaches for another tube, twists it all the way open and snaps the lipstick free. Scootches further down, off Mark's legs. "Spread them," he says, as he rubs the fragments between his hands. Mark giggles, mumbles something rude under his breath he doesn't catch; but he obeys. He transfers the color: toes to knees. Rubs them along coarser hair. His fingerpads snag on a partially picked scab, rise and fall over mosquito bites scratched hard and high. 

With a third, broken stick between his palms he moves forward and paints Mark’s dick and balls, the spaces between. Impersonal motions, he strives for them, but minutes ago Mark was halfway there. He touched the top of his leg, a bob and weave against his hand. Now a few drops - musky and thin - stick to his fingers, stretch between them. He wraps a hand around Mark and mixes them in.

“Jack,” Mark whispers, hoarse. A rasp in his throat that rises from his belly. Full of bristly, prickly _want._ He hears it at work and school, waking or sleeping, in a crowd or alone. When he's busy or doing nothing at all.

“Hmmm….”

“Are you done?”

“Almost. I promise.”

A swipe or two more, taking his time. He wipes his hands on his shorts, unties the scarf.

Mark interprets this as permission to check out what's been done to him. He props himself on elbows and scrutinizes himself: tilting his head first from this angle, then that one. Mark looks at him briefly, quizzically before returning to his examination. He frowns, trying to understand the method behind whatever this is, not having much success.

“What? You can say something,” he says, not defensive or worried. Not anything, really.

A corner of Mark's mouth quirks up. His lids are heavy but eyes curious, seeking. “You’re just…I don’t get it. This is what you wanted?”

“Yes.” He’s pleased to realize it is. 

Mark bends a knee and gives him an MC’s gesture, _Carry on._ As he does his dick twitches: a thick, lurid crimson he will never see in nature. An object of potential desire shown to him in the light of a single red bulb in an otherwise unlit, dive bar bathroom. (He’s been expanding his visual horizons.) A cloudy bead swells from the tip and trickles down the side

He believed he was done with Mark, he didn't think it was possible but there it is: a stirring, a _swelling_ of interest.

He knows what to do next.

He gives him a couple of finishing touches. A squiggle here, a squaggle there. More for show than anything substantive. These won’t matter, for how the final product looks.

He clambers off Mark and stands up: stiff and dizzy, dry mouthed and fading. 

He offers a hand. “I’m done. You can get up.”

He strips off his shorts, the blanket, the top sheet and both pillows; places Mark belly down on the bottom sheet and maneuvers himself into the fug of the lower bunk, between his legs. Mark grabs the peeling yellow bars of the bed frame and peeks at him over his shoulder, through his hair. He bites his lip and - an invitation, a promise, a demand - rocks forward. Plainly, blatantly seductive and on another day he'd wonder if Mark was making fun of him, _Don't you want a piece of this not-so-big boy,_ but he’s reaching for him, pinching the skin above his hip bone and with a yank hauling him closer, off-balance. He’d collapse on top of him if he didn’t at the last second brace himself against the mattress with a squeak and a bounce, with both hands and they’re kissing. Mark’s neck is twisted around and up and he bends his neck practically horizontal to compensate. They kiss hard and harder, with renewed urgency after hours of calm. Mark moans into his mouth, reaches for his dick and pushes it down, so it brushes his balls. He grips him around the head and he sighs. _Yes, yes. One more time, yes._

But the angle is awkward and Mark pulls away, plants his face into the mattress and wriggles.

“Jack,” annoyed, agitated. “You've had more than an hour of foreplay. Can we finally get on with it? It's what this has all been about, yes?” 

And there it is. 

_Why why why why why_. 

Dissatisfaction mingled with rage mixed with contempt. 

He doesn’t understand him. He never will.

He pulls Mark's legs apart and up, doesn't stop until muscles and tendons push back and he hears a quiver of pain. Mark's pelvis tilts down, his ass tilts up and he digs in his fingers, spreads it wide. The view is puckered and wrinkled, flexing and winking; it's positively lewd. There's a rumble in his head, distant thunder moving closer and the sound comes out of his mouth. With dry fingers, sloppily cut nails greased and tinted he presses, scrapes rough and uncaring. Scratches deep tender skin, pink and chafed. No time to think and he shoves a bent knuckle in. Mark shudders and clamps down on it; tucks his ass and curls away from him, into the mattress. He brings him back by his hair, adds a second one and they move deeper, too fast but Mark doesn't protest. "Jack," he says, not scared or angry or sad, not controlling or resisting but accepting, unrepentant. Not the reaction he hopes for. Never the reaction he hopes for. 

This is what he should do. Spit on Mark and slap him repeatedly across the face. Tear into him, split his skin three fingers wide with something from his desk: heavy, sharp and grey. Mash his face against the wall, the window, the cold metal of the bed frame. Ram him, fuck him dry, he's out for blood and tonight Mark would take it, though tonight it’s not what he wants.

But he’s akin to those fake summer storms. Chest pounding thunder, lightning sizzling along his skin, through his veins. White heat occluding heart eyes lungs brain. Followed by nothing. The thunder mumbles to a close. The forbidding clouds thin, lighten, dissipate, go wherever it is clouds go when the sun comes out. The threat, the promise of rain remains unfulfilled.

In the end, there's no reason, no justification to hold on to anger other than it's easy and expected. It's what they know, it's who they are. What’s the story, with the scorpion and the trusting (lovesick, heart-stupid) fool who offers him a ride across the river?

_Promise not to sting me?_

_Of course I promise. Would I lie to you?_

Not on purpose. And they both glare at each other, shocked and censorious, _How could you_ , as they sink to the bottom like stones.

It’s a boring story. It’s an old, stupid story. 

He pulls out and places a steadying hand on Mark's back. Slicks up the other - it’s one of his skills, one-handed application of lube - and brushes fingertips on the outside only, soothing and cool. Mark sighs and rises to meet them.

“Are you sure? We could do something else. I don’t want to hurt…”

“You’re like an old lady, Jack. Anyone ever tell you that?”

He fucks Mark into the mattress with his whole body. Covers him with it, slithers along him as vigilantly, as sinuously as Mark wordlessly requests but doesn’t receive because he’s nineteen, likes it hard and fast, sees stars when the tip of his dick brushes Mark’s asshole, forget about getting inside it.

But it’s been forty two hours, give or take a few breaks. It’s late, the music has stopped. Over the rustling of the sheet, the scritching of the bedsprings, their breathing like sawn-off metal, like a barrel rolled down a blacktopped road he can hear it, the crazy bird that starts at three in the morning. Mark pushes into, past the pain. Grabs his hands and makes them a pillow for his forehead. He can’t escape. Mark talks and talks, uses all sorts of words but he’s not listening, not changing his mind. He focuses on how silky smooth, how warm and tight he is. How if he grips the tops of his thighs while pressing him down, sharpening the angle at which he pushes home, Mark has to stop talking because he hits his sweet spot and there’s only room for groaning. He thinks about how good this feels. Not good but fantastic, not fantastic but out of this world. He can't find words strong enough to convey the sensations and he stops looking for them. He might truly be in the moment. He offers ludicrous encouragement no one says in real life. _You're so good, you're amazing, the way you take it. I'm waiting for you. Come for me. I know you want to, I know you can. Just like this._ He follows with a choked off wave, receding before it reaches shore, an eighth of a teaspoon of splooge. Collapses on top of Mark, the end of the marathon, too worn out for a victory lap and they fall into sleep dripping, softening, sticking to the sheets, breathing humid and stale on each other. 

The next morning Mark leaves. Five hours by bus, three hours by car. He doesn't mention he's researched this information.

Hands in their respective pockets, they stand on the front lawn. Mom, gone all night in a show of greatly appreciated discretion, if she’s noticed the broken drawer, the decimated makeup she’s not saying anything, pretends to clean up the breakfast dishes. “I’ll be in touch,” he says. "In the meantime, you do your thing and I’ll do mine. Whatever happens, happens. Good luck with your new job!”

Mark has no choice but to smile and agree.

The sheet is colorful. Streaked and blotted pink, red, black and brown. Smudged green and purple. Dotted silver and gold. Filigreed with hair. He sees fingers and a thumb, toes and the top of a foot, the imprint of what might be the heel of a hand. Crooked lines made by what is undoubtedly a dick. The smooth bits, the bony, rolling bits - knees, elbows and hips - leave their marks too. Some colors are bright, others vague. The whole effect is that of someone drawing on the sidewalk from a multi-color box of chalk, then shuffling through the design with bare feet; or wiping it down with a hasty, damp hand.

Beyond the colors, there’s nothing out of the ordinary about it. It's a dirty sheet that says nothing to anyone who wasn’t there. 

That night, everything of Mark’s goes into the box. Dead lighters, creased comic books, slimy t-shirts and wormy flannels; a smelly pair of sneakers with a hole in the right toe; tapes he doesn't listen to but won’t throw away; a pack of guitar strings, a frayed deck of cards, a pawn that got away; a torn sandwich bag with a fistful of shake; sealed bags of jellybeans, candy corn and watermelon Jolly Ranchers; mini snow globes, dollar sunglasses, novelty key chains, and other equally useless items “liberated” from all over town then gifted to him, like a cat bringing dead birds home.

The sheet stays. It stays on his bed through June, July and half of August. Smelling first like Mark, next like him, then a high school gym, armpit and jock strap, and finally nothing in particular. Maybe an attic: dry and musty, stuffed with dead things. Or a basement: damp and cold, squirming with vermin and memories. That’s when he takes it to the laundromat two towns over.

**Author's Note:**

> Since I started this canon divergent universe I've wanted to write something that references and follows up the scene with the lipstick. It took me a while to figure out how to do it.
> 
> The songs mentioned are by Spiritualized, from the album _Lazer Guided Melodies_ (1992). 
> 
> Some of Ms. Z's dialogue originated from _Draw it with your eyes closed: the art of the art assignment_ , Edited by Paper Monument (2012). 
> 
> At some point there will be a fourth story, though I can put no time stamp on it. Hopefully, a couple of you will still be around and interested in reading it. :)


End file.
